Recently, with the advent of a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), retailing of a wireless communication line is becoming popular. Conventionally, a mobile network operator (MNO) having a wireless communication infrastructure provided a wireless communication service to an end user directly. However, MVNOs provide original wireless communication services to the end user using the wireless communication infrastructure of an MNO.
MVNOs can be roughly classified into a form where a company does not have an in-house communication infrastructure and a form where a company itself has an in-house communication infrastructure and the communication infrastructure is connected to the communication infrastructure of an MNO to provide a wireless communication service (see FIG. 1). As compared with the case of the former, in the case of the latter, because the company has the in-house communication infrastructure and price setting according to communication quality such as communication speed and communication capacity is enabled, attempts to meet various needs are made. For example, SIM cards for a wireless communication service of which the price is suppressed by setting maximum communication capacity that allows high-speed data communication are sold in mass merchandisers.
Specifically, such an MVNO receives SIM cards from an MNO and provides the SIM cards to the end users. The MVNO manages communication quality such as speed limit and capacity limit set to each SIM card together with the identification number of each SIM card by a database and provides a wireless communication service according to the contract details for a portable terminal such as a smart phone and a tablet requesting an access to the Internet.
Also, there is a case in which a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) providing a support service to enable MVNOs to run a business smoothly intervenes between an MNO and an MVNO and the MVNE receives SIM cards from the MNO and provides the SIM cards to the MVNO.
When the MVNO or the MVNE holds a gateway (GGSN in 3G and P-GW in LTE) as an end point of a core network as an in-house communication infrastructure, L2 connection (full MVNO connection (S5/S8 interface in LTE and Gn interface in 3G)) with a communication infrastructure (SGSN in 3G and S-GW in LTE) of an MNO is enabled and an L2 tunnel is formed between a wireless terminal on which a SIM card of an end user is mounted and the gateway. Because the L2 connection has higher freedom in designing of a wireless communication service than L3 connection (light MVNO connection), the L2 connection is attracting attention.
A movement of IoT to connect all things to the Internet by adding wireless communication functions is the example of recent remarkable increase in the needs for wireless communication service. Hereinafter, a wireless apparatus that can be connected to a computer network including the Internet is called an “IoT apparatus”.
The IoT apparatus also includes a portable terminal such as a smart phone and a tablet held by a person. However, the IoT apparatus is expanding to apparatuses requiring communication of a form different from a communication form for a person, like a transportation means such as an automobile moving faster than a person and a sensor rarely moving from a specific position. For this reason, the required communication speed or communication frequency is various. It may be said that optimal communication quality is changing. For example, in the case in which it is considered that SIM cards are incorporated into 10 or 100 industrial machines to realize IoT and the industrial machines are remotely caused to perform communication with other apparatuses, installation of a large number of SIM cards is required even if each IoT apparatus performs communication of low capacity at a low frequency.
With the spread of IoT apparatuses, the number of users such as providers managing a plurality of IoT apparatuses increases, but on the other hand it is difficult under the present conditions for each user to make a contract with an MNO as an MVNO and collectively manage the plurality of IoT apparatuses, that is, a plurality of SIM cards mounted on the plurality of IoT apparatuses. First, the needs diversify together with the spread of IoT apparatuses and a situation where a small number of SIM cards such as several to several tens of SIM cards are used, like the case of making apparatuses IoT apparatuses on a trial basis, can be envisioned. When the user desires to manage the SIM cards collectively, instead of using the SIM cards through individual contracts, an MVNO contract with an MNO is necessary. However, there are many cases in that the small-scale MVNO cannot make a contract with the MNO to begin with. Then, even if the user can make a contract with an MNO as a small-scale MVNO, to increase
SIM cards by several to several tens of pieces, the MVNO needs to make a request to the MNO to associate the additional SIM cards with the ID of the MVNO(hereinafter, referred to as an “user ID”). After completion of the association, the MVNO receives the additional SIM cards and these become available for use. Specifically, as an association, a name of the MVNO, an identification number of each SIM card such as IMSI and ICCID, status such as in-use and inactive, etc. are input to each SIM card manually by a dedicated device and are registered in a database of the MNO. A series of procedures accompanying the circulation of SIM cards to an MVNO are complicated and requires several weeks. In addition, initial investment is necessary from economic point of view and it is not possible to meet the needs of a user who desires to use necessary number of SIM cards necessary for IoT apparatuses as needed.
An environment where a large number of users can become MVNOs easily is strongly required while it is anticipated that the number of small-scale and medium-scale MVNOs increases rapidly.